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Progressive ethics in the digital age

Three challenges faced by ethical systems in the modern world, and four possible responses to these challenges. Presentation used by David Wood at an event at Newspeak House on 11th January 2017, advocating a technoprogessive approach. For more details of the event, see https://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/events/235828492/. For a recording of a live video stream of the event, see https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=TThdPAkB68M.

3.
@dw2 Page 3
Ethics – a working definition
• Agreed constraints on our freedom
– Things we agree not to do, even though we have
the ability (and maybe the desire) to do so
– Things we agree to do, even though we might
desire to stand back and not take action
• Agreements with our society
– And/or with our communities or partners
– And/or with our (higher) self

4.
@dw2 Page 4
3 modern-day challenges for ethics
1. Technology gives us options to do many more
things than before, and we haven’t taken the
time to figure out what new constraints we need
2. Constraints that made sense in the past may be
unnecessary hindrances in the changed
circumstances of the present and near-future
3. The principles underlying ethics are lost in the
mists of time, frequently disrespected, but we
risk “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”

11.
@dw2 Page 11
UK Deaths each year
http://visual.ons.gov.uk/birthsanddeaths/
1918
• 1914-1918: World War 1: 17 million people killed
– ~10 million military personnel and ~7 million civilians
• 1918-1920: “Spanish Flu”
– 50 million people killed (~100 million by some estimates)
– Deliberately under-reported at the time in the media
– “The greatest medical holocaust in history”
• “Killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years”
• “Killed more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

12.
@dw2 Page 12http://www.vox.com/2015/5/27/8660249/gates-flu-pandemic
“The most predictable disaster in
the history of the human race…”
“A Spanish flu–like disease
unleashed on the modern world
would kill more than 33 million
people in 250 days”
Pathogens

21.
Saturday, 21 Jan 2017, 2pm-4pm
Effective Altruism:
The future of doing good deeds
#LonFut
https://londonfuturists.com/
forthcoming-meetings/
Main building, room to-be-announced, Birkbeck College
“How will current and future trends change
the way we seek to do good in the world?”
Sam Hilton, Founder of Effective Altruism London